


take a bow (for the bad decisions that we made)

by IdiotCrusader



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ana Has Her Regrets, Angst and Feels, Bittersweet, Established Relationship, F/M, Growing Old Together, Post-Recall, Reinhardt Loves Her No Matter What, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 10:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20704124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdiotCrusader/pseuds/IdiotCrusader
Summary: Ana and Reinhardt share a moment as they're reunited following the recall.





	take a bow (for the bad decisions that we made)

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Bastille - Bad Decisions.

The floral tea Ana makes for herself in the tiny, dark communal kitchen tastes bitter.  
  
Whether it is because of its natural flavour or her mood, she cannot tell. Wincing, Ana drinks it in small, slow sips, oddly savouring the way it burns her throat and makes her jaw tense with the tartness. The clock on the wall ticks off the seconds one by one.  
  
It’s been days since she came back to Gibraltar, bringing Jack along. Or, perhaps, it was the other way around. Both of them are notorious when it comes to leaving and never coming back, aren’t they? Neither of them seemed to be willing or ready to rejoin, they agreed on as much; and yet, they answered the recall. It happened almost naturally. Like the shavings of metal drawn to the magnet, they were slowly, reluctantly, but unavoidably, all the same, attracted to the watchpoint. Neither of them admits wanting to be back once.  
  
None of them admits having regrets, either.  
  
However they feel on the matter, returning after being gone for so long is… complicated. It’s been days, and Ana still hasn’t talked to anyone. Not in the real sense: there were, of course, the greetings, the questions and the plans, but none of the things that truly matter.  
  
Jack is out there somewhere making himself busy and trying to pretend he’s still in control, still able to lead, still knows what to do, and Ana is feeling… lonely. If that’s what _ lonely _ feels like, that is. She feels like she’s gone all alone, left to her own devices, for so long that having the others’ company lost any meaning, but the human soul gets accustomed to the good things quick. Jack is a good friend, and he _ understands_.  
  
Ana misses having him near, even if they’ve only been reunited for a few weeks. There are other options for a company out there, of course. The base is full of people and life; some of these people she used to cherish and love.  
  
Had she decided to talk to them, what would she say? What would she tell Fareeha, her own daughter, or Jesse, or _ Wilhelm_?  
  
As if on cue, heavy steps faintly echo in the corridor outside.  
  
Think of the devil, Ana thinks, and a small smile doesn’t reach her eyes settles on her lips. If anyone could be further from the devil, it would be Reinhardt, the kindest knight to have ever treaded the century unfit for the knights entirely.  
  
Reinhardt Wilhelm is… special, both in general and to her.  
  
Slowly stroking her fingers across the fine glass and enamel edge of her cup to mask the way her hands tremble ever so slightly, Ana thinks of all the times they’ve fought together; of the times he made her smile with the silly overconfidence and the unwavering sense of simple, easy-going humour and genuine passion for life that she could never match. Not then, and certainly not now.  
  
Ana is, in her own eyes, nothing but a broken shell of a woman. A shadow of what she used to be, a ghost roaming the battlefields that aren’t hers anymore. A far too large part of her soul is forever left on the sun-scorched streets of Cairo, an even larger one was dedicated to the war she no longer cares for. With that taken away, there is not much remaining.  
  
First and foremost, above all else, Ana Amari is a soldier.  
  
(She wishes she could be a friend, a _ mother_, too. Ana used to think that it did not work out for someone like her - and it was a natural run of things. Now she can’t help but wonder if she could have put in more effort. Done something differently. If she could change anything had she ever gotten the chance to replay.  
  
The hard truth is, the universe is not obliged to give out second chances, and neither are people.)  
  
She is a sharp shot laid to the centre of the crosshair, a protective fury given a body, a fierce guardian that belongs nowhere in particular.  
  
Reinhardt is a lionheart.  
  
The steps come to a halt just outside of the kitchen door. Ana stands at the counter, never turning to face him, her shoulders set in a tense line; she does not see but imagines the large hands hesitating for a second before pushing the door further aside. A powerful voice, brought down to a rumbling near-whisper, murmurs:  
  
“May I...?”  
  
She curtly nods in permission. Her fingers still trace the silver flowers painted on the cup.  
  
Ana’s tea is long finished, but the bitterness suddenly comes back; it stings her throat, her eyes - even the one that’s _ not there _ anymore, - and sinks down to her thrumming heart.  
  
They stand there, both of them, and don’t know what to say to each other. Two people who used to love each other so sweetly with ardent dedication, who were blessed with luck to meet again after all those years… to think that both of them survived to this day and age, despite giving themselves to constant war! They’re lucky to be here, merely a few steps apart from a happy reunion, and Ana doesn’t know what to _ say_.   
  
Reinhardt breathes out:  
  
“Ana…”  
  
She raises a hand to stop him before he can go any further.  
  
“You know I cannot say I’m sorry.” She takes a deep breath. The air feels thick and heavy, it fills her lungs with the stickiness of poisonous tar. Her own voice sounds unfamiliar; brittle like the glass under her fingertips. “I won’t ever be able to apologise.”  
  
There are things, so many, she could beg for forgiveness for - and god, does she _ want _ to. Sorry for disappearing, for leaving you alone. Sorry for the lies. Sorry for making you think I was gone.  
  
Even in her head, words of regret sound like consoling deceits.  
  
Reinhard takes a heavy step closer, and then another one, as his massive figure looms over her smaller shape. He makes her seem fragile. It’s misleading and true at the same time, really.  
  
False in a sense that her resolve is still tougher than steel. True in a sense that years of struggle forced cracks into the stone of her will. She is, in a way, fragile. 

Both of them are.  
  
“You look as beautiful as the day I met you.” As if her words never reached him, Reinhardt takes the very last step that closes the distance between them and reaches out to touch her.   
  
His hand slowly wraps around her slender body, sliding up to her face unhalted to brush across her eyepatch with the very tips of his fingers. When he lifts the patch, Ana just... lets him. They stay like this; Reinhardt’s fingers tenderly, tentatively studying the evidence of her failure, the brand her decisions left her. Ana is well past wanting her eye back. The imperfection is a good reminder, but not just of what hesitation can do. It’s each and every one of her mistakes, framed as a single mark.  
  
Ironic, isn’t it, how the injury has taken away from her vision, but if she ever was truly _ blind _ it was before getting shot by Amelie.  
  
“We match better now, don’t you think?” He chuckles softly, and Ana can’t help but do the same. Her own fingertips tingle with the familiar memory. How many times, how many hours she’d spent studying his scar? Tracing every raise and wrinkle of the rough whitened-out streak going across his eye just the way she strokes the silver petals on the cup now?  
  
There are many things he wanted to say back to her for so long, too. Ana doesn’t need to hear them to know, and it hurts. Hurts knowing him so well. Hurts that she’s thrown it all away. At least Reinhard never changed, she’s sure of it. What of Fareeha, of Jesse? They were, in one sense or another, her _ children_. Have they changed so much growing up without her she would no longer recognise them? Would they no longer recognise or need _her_?  
  
Ana lets her mind wander, and the unspoken words Reinhard carries on his sleeve like his big stupid heart flood her consciousness. I missed you. I mourned you. I was the only one left, and I grieved, and I used to dream of you coming back. And then you did, and instead of feeling angry at the lies I just felt tired.  
  
“You really should have been mad when you found out,” Ana sighs tiredly when the words in her head become too loud. Hearing his real voice would drown them out.  
  
Reinhardt is too forgiving. To attached to the ones he thinks of as family and friends. In the end, that would kill him - the process of slowly, slowly putting out the light burning inside his soul with grief and mourning would find its natural completion one day. The process that was set off the day when Ana, Jack and Gabe had died.  
  
Whether they ended up staying dead or not, does not matter. What’s done is already done.  
  
Reinhardt strokes her hair, leans down to press an adoring, feather-light kiss to the top of her silver hair. Ana wants to leave. She wants to go back to being alone.  
  
She wants to turn back and look him in the eyes and kiss him back _ so bad_.  
  
“I’m happy I can hold you again, and that’s all, my love.” His thick German accent rolls off his tongue, giving his words weight. He means it, even the endearment. He really does.  
  
It’s not there is to it, but Ana lets him have that. Leaning back into his embrace, she waits as her unfocused mind comes back to the present on its own volition. The living, persistent heat of his giant body. The calloused hand that ends up holding hers. The sound of their shared breathing. If she focuses on it hard enough, she can hear his heartbeat - going as strong and even as ever, after everything...  
  
Old soldiers never die, and they are remarkably resistant to fading away.  
  
Ana touches his hand in return, lightly clenching his fingers with her own. A gesture so simple, and yet so breathtakingly gentle it hurts both of them.  
  
“I don’t know what I could give you. We’re getting _ old_, Wilhelm.” Already are.  
  
They are yet to look each other in the eyes.  
  
There are many things Ana has lost, and she’s given away even more. Love is one of the latter. She’s sacrificed - and what for? - what she had with her daughter, with her brothers and sisters in arms. Her very ability to feel affection faded, just like that old discoloured pictures that Jack treasures so much. No matter how much it pains Ana to admit, she’s afraid to search her very own being and find _ nothing_. She’s always loved the poetic way to put things, even if it is cliche. Love is a delicate, radiant thing. The way to see it is quite simple: the old soldier’s heart is too scarred to handle it.  
  
Reinhardt… sees things in his own way, as he’s always did. He says, in that soft but deathly sure tone that he used to proclaim his love for her:  
  
“I’m asking to fight by your side one more time. That would be enough for me.”  
  
That’s what Ana used to love him for. His resilience, his never-ending mirth, the way he was seemingly unbothered by the unfairness and cruelty of the word and the graveness of the mistakes they kept making. The way he’s had his lows just like anyone, but never thought of them as the end of the world - unlike the rest of them.  
  
Seeing where that way of thinking got them, maybe the knightly ways had a point. At least Reinhardt still lives his life feeling like he’s been up to some good.  
  
Ana has long given up on feeling that way. The heavy cross of the bad decisions weights her down too much. Whether she does good or bad, nothing would bring back the happier days; the younger years; the clearer consciousness. To keep trying is only troublesome and barely worthwhile.  
  
Except that’s a lie, or she wouldn’t have fought for her city. Wouldn’t have saved Jack.  
  
Wouldn’t have answered the recall.  
  
The glass in her hand lets out a melodic chime as Ana lowers the cup into the sink, careful not to break it. Her hands are as steady as a sniper’s would be.   
  
“We are looking for a way to go out with a bang, aren’t we?”  
  
“There is no honour in peacefully dying in your own bed,” Reinhardt puts as simply as he always does; Ana nods, barely bothering to hide a pained smile.  
  
“Right. It would have been awfully boring to waste away our retirement on some outrageously peaceful beach anyway.”  
  
Reinhardt just softy hums in response. It’s better than any confession, more sincere than any promise. There is nothing either of them would rather have.  
  
Happy ever after is not something people like them get, and it’s not something people like them can _ stand_. It’s too late to teach two old dogs new tricks. They are meant for war, and they’ve given their hearts and souls to it; there is no turning back now.  
  
Perhaps they can still spare what remains for each other. 


End file.
